


i think that i have separation issues

by HomesickAlien



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, is ao3 working again can i post this lol, spiders mentioned in the first few paragraphs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 19:26:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15226212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HomesickAlien/pseuds/HomesickAlien
Summary: we'll be just fine





	i think that i have separation issues

**Author's Note:**

> [title and summary are from this song.](https://thehacking.bandcamp.com/track/we-grow-2)

There’s nothing really fulfilling about it. It’s as redundant as scratching the chin of cat for hours on end, the way the spider travels from one finger to another on an endless journey for stable land is mindless and cumbersome for the both of them, he’s sure. It makes his whole world feel astronomical, its as small as the nails on his fingers, and he might lose it if he takes his eyes off it for even a moment. Back and forth, like petals falling in the wind, without end, even if his mind is miles deep in other places, he never stops watching the intricate movements of each and every little leg tapping light as a feather against his skin.

He can’t even really feel it. If he weren’t staring right at it, he might not even know it were there. It’s as elegant a metaphor for life as any other, and just as the weight of his self feels so much more significant as an island for a miniscule arachnid, so does the weight of his soul. Its life is so fragile and delicate, like cracking an egg for sustenance. His life is fragile, too, but in other ways. He might not be crushed so easily, or threatened by the presence of a monster preying specifically on his life, but he can’t seem to keep his eyes open for an entire day without passing out flat on the ground. He wonders when he’ll hit his head against concrete, or fall into a hypoglycemic coma, and die without anyone there to notice.

He wonders just how much trouble he’s causing.

It’s all that connects him to disgusting monstrosities like beasts in fiction and spiders climbing up the walls. He’s really not trying to be a burden, but nothing feels the way it used to feel, not even the slightest bit. It’s as though, without warning, an asteroid struck his world throwing all it’s structure out of balance overnight. He hasn’t come to reconcile with how to compensate with it, not yet. It was easy to begin overworking and performing all his own, but trying to step into the shoes of God is like jumping right in to a black hole. He feels like he’s being swallowed whole without anyone to guide him on where to go. 

He closes his fingers around his palm. 

It doesn’t take long for it to pokes its itty bitty legs out from a crack between his fingers. It doesn’t beg him for freedom or attempt forcing its fangs to cut through his skin. Its as weak and complacent as Mika himself. He opens back up his hand slowly and meticulously, letting his hand fall from above his head down to the floor at the edge of his bed.

It’s so empty and quiet, here. He hadn’t really thought about how lonely it is to sleep alone, to have his own room made in his image and still have it be so foreign to him. To call this home would be as baffling as walking through snow in shorts and sandals. It barely even constitutes a house, it’s just as good as shelter to him.

Even if it’s a living quarters shared with the mentor he loves, the sovereign he aspires to be like, something that was never there to begin with feels like it’s been lost. Like it’s missing all together from the feelings that used to flutter in his heart. It’s hard to explain something that feels as fake as the friendship Valkyrie founded itself upon, it’s hard to explain longing for something you never actually had. But if he really believes it, if he tells himself over and over again the love between them was as genuine as family caring for one another, it’ll become as true as the gravity grounding him in this place.

It’s just a simple justification. If they’re the family Nazuna abandoned, it’s entirely fair of him to hate Nazuna with every ounce of his being, with every passionate beat of his heart. If he could really despise him like a pest invading his home, it might return just the slightest bit of balance to his world. But he just can’t seem to get that far.

He sits up from his bed, stepping out of the darkness of its caverns out into the dimly lit halls of Itsuki’s household. Every step he takes is as mechanical as they come, walking out into the kitchen, opening up the cabinets, the fridge; taking a sip of water and only just one sip. He walks into a bathroom he doesn’t need to use just to stare into his soul for a while in the mirror, then walks right back in when he realizes he does need to use it. When he steps out the world feels entirely new and equally empty, like he’s woken up in the wrong timeline–  _ a nightmare– _ and has no means of escaping it. As he traverses the hall leading back to his room like a zombie without the will to live, he bumps right into the light of God.

“Kagehira,” Shuu says, with all the formalities of a stern mother scolding a child, “What are you doing?”

“Nnn…. Ah…. I…. Don’t know.”

Somewhere in all those long pauses and interjections he’s certain he meant to come up with some kind of convincing lie, but he just isn’t that smart. Rather, he’s not certain he’s capable of it at all, lying to his endearing mentor. He’s doing all he can to be a good boy, after all. An honest and kindhearted boy; even if he stumbles, he can’t lie to him at all. He can’t betray his trust, it’s the only sense of stability he has in his life.

Like a parasite, a tick leeching off his skin, he can’t help but take and take until he has his fill. Even if it hurts, just to feel the release of vertigo swirling round his head, to let go of the starvation devastating him until he can’t walk straight…

“I couldn’t sleep, that’s all.” 

“That’s all, is it? If you’re going to waste away your entire night at least spend it doing something productive. You’re going to wake up my family wandering about here.”

“Was I bein’ loud?”

Mika asks, almost reclusively as though he really were being punished. He and Shuu both know that kind of cruelty is well beyond him, dissipating with the love that wasn’t really love at all and melding kindness to fill a hole of guilt in his heart. He could be cruel, probably, but if he doesn’t practice being patient and honest with himself he’ll never find the courage to be able to talk to him again. Mika shares the sentiment, but not the goal; he hasn’t a clue what he’d really say if he ever faced Nazuna again no matter how frequent and inevitable the tides of their fate crash into each other.

“No.” Shuu says, with a long, drawn out pause filled only by the silent and unintentional judgement of the glare locking his eyes with Mika’s. “I was up, too.”

He confesses, without any emotion to give it meaning. It’s just a thought floating in the air like smoke trailing a cigarette. Suffocating, draining…. 

“Wanna watch a movie?”

“I said do something productive.”

“Ya wanna make food together?”

“Something quiet.”

“Wanna sleep together?”

“What are you, a child who woke from a bad dream or something?” Shuu sighs, turning away to wander back into his room and Mika follows like a puppy chained to a leash. “Rather, you’re like an obnoxious cat that has to mark his scent in every place I take leisure in. Won’t you ever get bored of me?”

“I don’t know.”

Mika says, dragging his words out of his throat like anvils through the ocean floor. Even when they’re so hopelessly open ended, they’re comforting to hear, if only because they aren’t the word  _ yes. _ Shuu feels at any moment he’ll watch it all play over again, and though he can assure with grumpy words he’d rather take two losses in one stone throw, he’s not sure what he’d actually do if he were left all alone with his thoughts, and the sensation of loneliness is mutual between them. Mika can’t share a bed with anyone but Shuu, because nobody shares their experience with abandonment to talk through it when insomnia and the silence of the darkness take hold of them by the ankle of their thoughts. 

Even if their walking around it in different manners, the road block itself is still the same.

Shuu falls into bed in an awkward and uncomfortable way, one that makes room for the imperfection of Kagehira Mika that tears through everything Shuu loves like a tornado just passing through. Itsuki Shuu molds his image in perfection as an idol and Mika fumbles with his hand in jars of clay. Even if he’s wretched, like a crow, it’s only through some lack of faith that one could be so angelic by sheer accident.

“Mentor…” Mika mumbles on Shuu’s chest he’s comfortably curled onto. Even if he hates it, if it makes his head hurt and skin itch, there’s beauty in taking in every sense of being alive together. His ear to Shuu’s beating heart, pumping blood with a light gurgle just the way it ought to, he melts away all the icy feelings of regret and malice overwhelming him in the heat of Shuu’s skin. Shuu’s breath evenly pouring into Mika’s nose, not too heavy and not too light, reminding Mika every half second later he needs to breath, too. That he needs to stay alive, that he has a reason to keep being alive even when everything’s fallen apart. Even shipwrecked and lost at sea, there’s always some place to walk towards. 

As long as he can move his feet proper, there’s always somewhere to move towards. It’s the only sentiment Nazuna certainly shares with him. 

“Mentor…” Mika reiterates, turning his head, listening closely with his other ear. “I wish I wasn’t human.”

Shuu smiles, but not because it’s something he can relate to any longer. It’s just so nostalgic to hear again, that it were something anyone would want after all their trials and tribulations together, is something only a brainless fool like Mika could ever chose as his one time wish upon a star. 

It’s hard to focus with a wish like that pressing down on Shuu’s chest. He wonders just how different Mika would be if he believed Nazuna’s gospel over Shuu’s, if he could see he were worth more than just being derelict, used goods. If he could be a real boy, just like Nito. 

He wishes it were that simple to run away.

“I wish I coulda been your perfect doll. I wish I could dance the way ya want me to. I wish I could sing in a voice befittin’ Valkyrie. I wish ya weren’t so perfect and I could be your sun. I wish…” 

He keeps rambling off all kinds of things Shuu’s already painfully aware of, like rubbing salt into his wounds. He goes on and on without a peep out of Shuu, not expecting anything but feeling disappointed and fulfilled all the same. He’s not sure what he wants his idol to say, what the Lord could say back that would bring comfort to the confessions of His children, but anything would certainly be enough from someone so omnipotent. Just proof he were here at all would be enough, but Shuu still can’t return even an ounce of that honesty at all just yet.

He pats Mika’s head reminiscent of all the grace he’d offered Mika just one year prior. It’s such a simple gesture, one that welcomed him as one of Shuu and Nazuna’s own. Like a child that can’t quite fit the boots of his parents, he feels himself falling again.

His eyes heavy, closing all on their own until he can’t remember where he’d left off, or falling asleep at all. It was probably a terrible place to leave off, a cliffhanger of thoughts that hold no meaning or purpose to anyone but the two of them, but he’s sure he’ll regret it when he wakes in the morning. It wouldn’t be a bother at all, just one more regret burning in the pile.

But Shuu can’t seem to let it leave his mind. It’s just another burden on his shoulders, replaying over and over in his head until it grows unbearable. He never stops running his fingers through Mika’s hair, the mindless motion of petting an animal bringing light to his shame. It doesn’t distract him, it only holds him down, forcing back anxiety to keep up the image of a leader. 

He can’t sleep even a wink, and in the morning he won’t dare to let it show until he can see Mika smiling honestly like the child he first met him as. The image of their reunion only adds to the misalignment of all Mika’s present desires. And of all the vacant whims Mika follows through with, it’s the only desire he shares in common with the mentor he loves the most.

_ I wish big brother Nazuna were here.  _

**Author's Note:**

> comment.


End file.
